“It was common practice on plantations in Bimshire for a Plantation Manager to breed any woman he rested his two eyes on. As many as he could climb.
“And so it was with me. And with Ma. And with Ma’s mother, until we get far-far-far back, get-back on the ships leaving Africa, sailing on the high seas, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, trying to reach Amurca, before more rape and suicide and deceit and betrayal, and desperation overtake them. And they decide to jump overboard, and face the broiling green waves of the Deep; and God; taking suicides, which was better.
“Wishing that the Atlantic storms and hurricanes would have no mercy on us! That they would wash-we-way overboard . . .
“And here I am. In this underground tunnel, just like on one of those ships, reeling in the middle of two waves, in a trough of the ocean, with the wave over my head, waiting to swallow-me-up and drown me; and I am wasting my breath, asking a stupid question, ‘What has he done to me?’ I must be out of my blasted mind, Percival. Mad. Percy, I must be stark-goddamn-crazy. Mad! A cunu-munu.
“You can understand what I am talking about, can’t you, Percival? That I am talking about blood. Bad blood. And blood that have a taint to it. A awful smell that not even Jays Fluid could erase.
“When Wilberforce reached ten, and from ten-onwards, he never once-again in public went up to Mr. Bellfeels, or sought him out. Never in company. Nor in public. And he didn’t have to do it, in private. It was like Wilberforce had-develop a strong-enough smell of the man, and that the memory of that first smell remained in his memory. Poor boy! And that he couldn’t any more stomach any further reminder of that scent. That smell. That taint. Perhaps, that is why he is so formal, even in addressing him—Bellfeels.
“And then, one afternoon. I caught him. A Wednesday afternoon. Just home from Harrison College, waiting for his piano teacher. Standing up by himself in the front-house, looking at a photograph he held in his hand, and holding it up to his face; looking at it, holding it to his face, looking at it, when quick-so, I spotted the empty space on top the piano, where I kept photographs of the family . . . Or was it top of the mantelpiece?
“Wilberforce had Mr. Bellfeels in his hand, examining! Mr. Bellfeels in a khaki suit, standing-up beside his horse.
“And Wilberforce is holding this photo to his face, and he turns his face to one side, and then to the next; and then is looking into the looking glass, over the mantelpiece, studying what the looking glass is reflecting back to him; and then, as if not satisfied with what he is seeing, again he starts examining and scrutinizing the photograph in his hand.
“You could see the concern on that poor boy’s face.
“I remain outside the front-house at the door, and I am shaking with, with nervousness, not knowing what to do; cause I don’t want Wilberforce to see me watching him, nor hear a peep outta me, saying a word to let him know that I am looking at him, taken up with his inspection, and in his examination. And through my mind, sudden-sudden-so, pass the words he might-have-heard passed at Harrison College, by other boys, or even by his Form Master . . .
“But what he did next frightened me. It stopped my breathing. I am holding my breath against detection. Wilberforce takes up my picture, and place it on the mantelpiece beside the picture of Mr. Bellfeels with the horse, and Wilberforce turns his head to one side, then to the other side, trying to make his sight and vision come into perfect focus, and tell his mind what his little heart was showing him.
“I saw my son that afternoon, worrying-over this question, probably said in a cruel remark at the College; and there he was, in front of me, searching in his own way for the answer to the question that every child should know. Now-remembering the remark that Ma had drop to me, years before, ‘who my father was’; and me not being sure myself if I wanted Wilberforce to ever ask me that same question; and that afternoon, in order to make sure that Wilberforce didn’t put that question to me, I pretended that I was angry with him over something. And I rushed into the front-house. Screaming something. Or the other. At him.
“Hearing my voice, and seeing me in that state, was a shock to him, poor fellow; it was the first time in his life, I raise my voice to him; and the shock caused him to drop the picture, oh-my-God; the picture with me in it, oh-my-God, and break it! Wilberforce looks up at me. In this scared innocent way. Not even understanding why my voice was-raise against him. In anger.
“I got Gertrude to sweep-up the glass. Mr. Waldrond reframed the picture the next day.
“He left the room. Wilberforce. I stayed back, sitting down for the longest time, in my chair, studying; my knitting in my lap untouched, until the shadows of evening came down upon the front-house, and Gertrude brought in the acetylene lamps, and lighted them; and raised the mantles. Night catched me there, still sitting, and studying; surrounded by light, but with my heart still darkened and saddened by watching Wilberforce search for the answer; studying.
“My two eyes filled-up with cry-water. My belly burned me. I knew, even without knowing it, that I knew the answer.
“Looking back now, I was very glad that I had the presence of mind to pretend that I was angry at Wilberforce, the minute I suspected what he was searching for; and in my anticipation that I did not want him to ask me that question . . . and I would have lied to him, rather than tell him the truth . . . I therefore made-sure he would not have to ask the question I could see his little brain was revving-up to ask of me: ‘Mother, could Mr. Bellfeels, my father, be related to you?’
“What could I do? At that moment? Tell Wilberforce? What could I tell my child? How could I break the truth of the news to Wilberforce? So, I kept it to myself. And in my heart. In the same way that Ma kept it within hers. Until it almost burst her heart.
“And me-now. Nobody will ever know, but you. Never.
“Ma tried her best to tell me the truth, no matter how hard it was; but as a member of the Mothers Union, and knowing what the Mothers Union stand for, Ma must have went-through pure hell, day in and day out, for all those years, keeping her secret.
“Back there in the cane field, laying down beside you, on the trash, which was a stupid thing on my part, and something I already regret . . . and I wish you could understand . . . back there in the North Field, when we were playing Court, and I was in the role of the barster-at-Law for the Accused, defending myself, I was going to try, if I had the chance, to show why I did it. Why I had to do it.
“Here was a man who you could say was such a loving father, never allowed any differences to be made between his two inside spinster-thrildren, Miss Euralie and Miss Emonie, and between Wilberforce. Not counting my two who died soon after childbirth. The same standard of education he gave the three of them. The same clothes. The same allowance-money. The same bank accounts held in trust. The identical money in each.
“It is true that neither of the two, Miss Euralie Bellfeels or Miss Emonie Bellfeels, ever had to use their university education, nor lift a straw, apart from substituting for one week at two different times, at Queen’s College teaching Latin, when the full-time Latin Mistress was on maternity leave to have a baby.
“What a waste of good education!
“But the Plantation is very rich, and powerful. And it have more money and has made more profits off the backs of slaves and the sweat of coloured people than what you could read about in any of the Gospels. Both of them are highly educated women, for women in this day-and-age, in this Island. Both studied the Classics, Latin and Greek, Cambridge University, at a high level. And Music. The piano you can hear all hours of the night, sometimes, is the two of them. Nothing but waltzes. And ‘I Vow to Thee, My Country.’
“I am sure that if I was able to get my two hands on the documents that the Solicitor-General wrote-up for Bellfeels, and if I could understand the legal terms and their terminologies, and if I could break-open the safe that he keeps in his bedroom in the Main House, I would see that this Great House I am put to live in, to bring-up his son in, is already left-back, in those legal
papers and in Mr. Bellfeels handwriting, witnessed-to and stamped for Wilberforce. Seal-and-sign!
“Of course, expecting that I will be six-feet-under before Wilberforce deading-off, soon. And I sure-sure that the two fair-sized wall-houses, on the edge of the Plantation Estate, the two with the upstairs verandahs and the fruit trees surrounding them, that look down into the sea, the two on the cliff, those two also already have Miss Euralie and Miss Emonie names witnessed-to and stamped, on them. So, why?
“Why?
“Why I had to do it?
“I will tell you why. This is the truth. The God’s truth. The whole truth. And nothing but the truth.”
“So help you, God?”
“So-help-me-God!”
“Let me hear the truth, then, Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda Bell—” Sargeant says.
She cuts him off before he can complete the name.
“Don’t!” she says.
Her tone is high, raised beyond her normal speaking voice; and her manner is without softness and emotion; and is threatening.
“Don’t you ever address me to my face by that name! Not even behind my back. It is not a name I want to have!”
“Well, you could tell the truth by using any surname, Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda,” Sargeant says.
And he smiles: he knows this is the surname she is called by openly, in the Selected Clienteles Room, in the sub-station and throughout the Village, by Manny and his friends; and just as openly by the Constable and Naiman.
When the telephone call came that afternoon, disturbing them from their game of dominoes, Naiman had announced, “The Great House, Sargeant. Miss Bellfeels want to speak to you.”
“Bellfeels deputy-wife? I wonder what Miss Bellfeels want?”
And she knows that his wife is called Mistress Badfeels.
“Don’t ever use that name for me!” Mary-Mathilda says again.
And this makes Sargeant stiffen, and become formal like a policeman on duty.
He opens his small black book with the elastic band round its back, to keep its contents safe and secret; and he begins at last to take down his notes, already headed Evidence pertaining to the Case of Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda BELLFEELS, at the Great House, Sunday the 13th Instance. He puts the pencil into his mouth, and wets the lead in the pencil, and he screws up his face, making his large eyes into slits, concentrating; and looking like a man with bad eyesight.
He is poised now. To take down her Statement.
“I ready now, Miss Mary,” he says.
“A word or two, before you go from here,” she tells Sargeant. “I did some good things about here, in all this time you know me. And I talking to you in this Statement, as if I am addressing the Court of Grand Sessions. All I ask you, Sargeant, when people, including the Commissioner of Police, ask you to repeat what my evidence is, tell him what you know about me. Just as I am. Without one plea. You would know what to leave-in, and what to leave-out. Let your conscience be your guide. Tell him about me, not out of malice, but as a woman who did what she do, did, to save her soul.”
The formality of her words, and the ponderousness of the thoughts inside her head, seduce her; and she assumes the posture and rhetoric and “silks” of a King’s Counsel, whom fantasy has chosen as the barrister for her defence; and easily, she slips back into this role, giving evidence, in defending herself . . .
“It is not as a murderer that she stands before you. Even if on the night in question, murder was the only occupant of her mind.
“If it was in her mind when she set out, it had vanished from her mind when she entered the Plantation grounds, and approached the Main House.
“Not in stealth, even although it was a dark night. The Plantation’s three German Alasatian dogs and the two Doberman-Pincers ran up to her, to greet her, licking her feet and fingers, and jumping up to kiss her.
“Standing in the midst of the five dogs kissing her, she had a strange sensation dealing with sacrifice. I can only identify that sensation as a kind of sacrifice.
“She was sacrificing him. She has lived under circumstances for the past thirty-eight years that was unworthwhile.
“She is a woman with a past of strangulation. Her future ended with each setting of the sun every evening.
“She could not continue to live in that situation, as she could not breathe in it; so, she had to change it. And she changed it in the only way that she knew how.
“Her act is the act of self-defence.
“Mixed-in with the act of sacrifice.
“She wanted to sacrifice herself along with the other-mentioned sacrifice she has made.
“She is a very ordinary woman, possessing education not beyond Standard Seven, at Sin-Davids Elementary School for Girls. But that education served her..Well, and proved to be good-enough.
“Good-enough to lead a Christian life.
“Good-enough to understand what’s going on round her.
“Good-enough to read the Bimshire Daily Herald, every morning.
“Good-enough to follow what people of a better station in life than she are saying to her.
“Good-enough to understand the meaning of Church.
“Good-enough to raise a son.
“Good-enough not to bear malice, nor vengeance for the stillbirths of another son and a daughter.
“Good-enough not to cross the paths of, nor show disrespect to, the other lady.
“Good-enough to respect those lower than her in state, estate, and station.
“And good-enough to know her place on this powerful estate.
“So, she stands before you, naked; as a woman; not jealous in spite of cause; but when pushed, she becomes real mad. A straightforward woman. Plain. Simple. Not highly educated, as she has stated. But deeply religious. And consequently, not a fool, as a result.”
She changes her stride, and walks with the hoe in her right hand. The alteration in her stride matches the rising of her voice. Her words flow behind her, and hit him like the pelting of dust in the wind, armed with fine specks of gravel.
He wonders if this is the working of his imagination, or if the dust, the white specks, the accidental rubbing of his shoulders on the coral stone wall, as he follows her in this subterranean tunnel, is the reason his mind might be inventing all this. Whatever it is, his attention is cemented to her words. He has put the notebook away.
He will omit as much as possible of the evidence from the Statement he has to write. He intends to begin writing it from memory and from his notes, on official foolscap-sized paper provided by the Police Department, at the sub-station; and the moment he leans up his bicycle, and has his cup of strong loose-leafed green tea, with a thick, three-inch slice of coconut bread (which Naiman prepares for him, every morning, at six o’clock), he will begin. He can taste the tea, whitened by fresh cow’s milk. Perhaps, if she is in a better mood, when she reaches the door that leads up into her kitchen, and if she has the time, and if there is time before Gertrude arrives, and if Wilberforce is not awake and ready for his own breakfast, she might prepare him a cup of strong green tea. And a slice of Gertrude’s coconut bread.
In the bedroom, the light of morning comes in like spray through the white voile curtains. The smell of fresh cow dung comes in with the light. And the wind sweeps in from over the hills, passing the Plantation Main House, through the fruit trees of mango, pear, ackee, breadfruit, puh-paw and tamarind, down the incline that leads into the fields, the North Field and the South Field, through the gully, and finally again up the slight incline to her house, and her bedroom in the Great House.
The voile curtains fly like kites, crash against the glass in the half-opened windows, collapse like burst balloons, and they billow out from the glass, like the sails on yachts leaving the Aquatic Club.
The morning light makes the fields give off a haze that looks like smoke rising from a starting fire. And the morning has in it, at this hour, the signalling small fires from the labourers’ chattel houses that mark and dot the gree
n land.
In her bedroom, once again, and with the full light of the morning sun sprinkled over the bed, Sargeant paints a picture in his mind of a man’s body on the white bedspread; and the form left by the body identifies itself in his mind as Mr. Bellfeels’ body. All desire that had ridden his comfort during the long night has left his body. All he can see in her bed, with its seductive smell, the dainty pillowcases, the feminine touch of colour and the softness of cloth, sheets, nightgown and pillowcase, soften his heart, but point out the discomfiture that the richness of this room brings with it. But the image of another man’s body in the bed he himself had wished he could occupy with her beneath him is too strong. Sargeant cannot think of love, or lust, in this bedroom any longer.
Sargeant’s mouth is like sandpaper; and he does not wish to think of the fragrance of his breath. Nor the smell of his armpits. Small grits of dust seem to move round his eyeballs. The weight of the night descends upon him, as he watches her take a towel from the stand that contains a wash basin and a ewer, and pass it up and down the handle of the hoe, and make the shine return to the wood. He watches as she passes the same towel across the blade.
The sun streams through the window upon her, and rests on the blade, and makes it easy for Sargeant to read the name of the English manufacturer.
“This was made in Englund,” he says.
“What isn’t,” she says. “What isn’t?”
“The blade,” he tells her. “The blade of this hoe!”
He writes a note in his small black notebook, after flipping back the rubber band that keeps the pages in place. Make in Englund, he writes. And then, he adds, after wetting the lead pencil in his mouth, Note bene. Reference: the hoe blade! Important.
“Made in Englund,” she says, noticing the concentration in his face as he writes. She cannot see what he has written.
The Austin Clarke Library Page 47
